Author: paschmann

Epic Photo: Richard Lasher – Mt. St. Helens 1980

paschmann

An interesting and memorable photo I came across on Instagram and looked into the story behind it. Fascinating read.

Photograph of a pinto with Mount St. Helens erupting in the background.

Story Source:

The Eruption and the PintoAn epic tale of survival, a viral photo, and the disappearance of Dick Lasher.

Days after the catastrophic eruption of Mount St. Helens, Cliff Smith heard a remarkable story he’d never forget. 

Smith was working for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, pitching vending machine companies on carrying their cigarettes. Smith was riding shotgun with a “routeman,” restocking vending machines with Camels, when he started talking about his close call with the eruption. The man’s name was Richard “Dick” Lasher. 

On the morning of May 18, 1980, Lasher, who was also a freelance photographer, headed towards Mount St. Helens in his bright red Ford Pinto. Lasher told Smith that his plan was to drive his Pinto as far as he could, then take his motorcycle, precariously hitched to the bumper, even closer. “He tried to get as close as possible,” Smith recalled. “I don’t think at the time he knew just how close he was.”  read more

Carvera Air CNC

paschmann

Super stoked to have finally received the Carvera Air which I ordered on Kickstarter about 9 months ago!!! After doing a bunch of 3D printing and laser cutting with the Glowforge, I really wanted to test/try out CNC’ing and see what I could learn and build with a small desktop machine. I have been considering this for probably 4+ years, but never found the right machine or the intention to spend the money. Last year I decided to pull the trigger and after a long wait it finally arrived 🙂

First project was building a couple small parts to understand the workflow which I think turned out great. Overall, I am already really impressed. I think I will be constrained by the bed size, but will cross that bridge when I get to it 🙂 read more

Stryd Foot Pod

paschmann

Another fun gadget to try out and satisfy my data curiosity. I would also like to use it for treadmill workouts to accurately gauge pace (as different treadmills show different paces). I am also hoping to gain some power insights (however this seems to be fairly nuanced by the fact Garmin, Apple and Stryd dont share a common standard for calculating this, unlike in cycling). Therefor Styd power needs to be compared to Stryd power, not my entire history of Garmin running power metrics 🙁

Open Source Project: Reach UI

paschmann

After building the open Source Reach SDK project, I realized it would be great to have an accompanying UI /Dashboard/Work bench where I would be able to test various notification methods and configurations before including them in my projects. Due to this, I build Reach UI, under the hood it is a simple static site with a Node.JS backend, using the Reach SDK. I think it does an ice job at showing how simple it can be to implement the SDK in your code base, and even includes some example code to make it even easier.

Check it out on Github below:

GitHub – paschmann/reach-ui: A test UI for the Node.js Reach SDKA test UI for the Node.js Reach SDK. Contribute to paschmann/reach-ui development by creating an account on GitHub.